The German Ministry of Economy stated on Tuesday that it is “open to a review” of the European sanctions planned for 2025 targeting car manufacturers who exceed CO2 emission thresholds, a position backed by Paris to aid the struggling sector.
“We want to maintain our decarbonisation targets but we also need solutions for our automotive industry,” said Bernhard Kluttig, the designated Secretary of State for the Economy, during a press conference with French Minister of Industry Marc Ferracci.
Ferracci is calling for the European Commission to suspend fines set for 2025 under the European CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standard, which obliges car manufacturers to gradually sell less polluting vehicles. The next phase of this regulation starts in January 2025 but is seen as a burden for the German automotive industry, already strained by Chinese competition, high energy costs, and weak global demand.
Postponing the fines to 2026 would ease pressure on “the players who have heavily invested in electrifying their production lines over the past five years,” Ferracci emphasised.
In Germany, nearly 140,000 automotive industry jobs could disappear by 2035 due to the sector’s electrification – almost 20% of the current workforce, according to a recent study by the automotive federation VDA.
But the whole of the EU will be impacted: at the end of October, European automotive suppliers reported 32,000 job cuts across Europe in the first half of 2024, surpassing the numbers seen during the Covid pandemic.
